Jum's Birthday

 [Disclaimer: I wrote this long ago and only a few people got the privilege (lol) to read it. This was on 29th November and No I’m not stating that simply to remember Jum’s birthday. Maybe I am, but that’s the most boring mystery that has ever existed. Anyway, enjoy the rest of it and you can laugh at me too]

Today was one of the worst days ever. This is not an attention-seeking post, it isn’t intended to be so. I’m sharing this because emotions allow me to write and after being mindless about my emotions or rather very careful about how I express them, today I let my guard down. This is allowing me to write after almost 4-5 months. Honestly, I don’t even remember when I last wrote. This is going to be really long, so buckle up, get yourself a cup of coffee, or some whiskey (if you’re a tea person, I really don’t know what to do with you), and let’s begin.

I went to college today to celebrate Jum’s birthday. None of us had any intention of attending any class. We were exhausted, whiny, and cranky. Jum, Arya, Afreen, and I had the most stressful couple of weeks. I hate talking about college or how stressful it gets because of the stereotypes around Arts being easy and chill. It makes me feel insecure and judged when people take my course lightly, and nobody seems to understand the stress we go through. Anyhow, that’s for another day.

For a while now, I have been helping all my friends, and as my designated name suggests, I was literally being the ‘mom of the group’. I had too much on my plate in addition to my college and masters. It has almost been 2 weeks since I got ONE day off. We’ve been working on Sundays and I haven’t reached home before 5pm in forever. Don’t get me wrong, I am extremely proud of all my friends and the things they’ve been achieving recently, and more so, I am so grateful to have them share such intricate details of their life with me. But it got too much. I felt like since I was constantly making so many efforts to make everyone happy I couldn’t actually be there for any of them at the time of their need. I felt like a bad friend, a bad daughter, and a bad person overall.

All these feelings I suppressed for so long surfaced up finally (honestly so GRATEFUL they did). Here’s the fun part haha (looking back at it obviously, was not a great experience at that moment). I broke down. I cried and cried till my eyes were wrung out dry and then I cried a little more, and a lot more and… more. 

Arya, Jumaanah, and I sat in the coffee shop for 2 hours. They hugged me and consoled me. They made me feel loved, they spoke in my love language (words of affirmation), which I so badly needed.

A lady (almost the age as my mom) looking at all this, came to us, spoke to me, hugged me, and literally took care of me. The coffee shop employee tried to cheer me up and for those 2 hours, it finally felt like I mattered. I blabbered about how I was feeling, cuddled into every human I could find [3 people haha] and sat there sobbing like a baby.

Finally, I got my ass up and we decided to go celebrate Jum’s birthday, honestly, FINALLY. We got to college, I embarrassed myself in front of two teachers, while I was crying, once again *facepalm* and then I cried in front of a few other classmates again. (I mean, did you expect something better?)

After all this, we travelled around 5-6 kilometres and went to a wizard-themed restaurant to have some lunch (at freaking 3pm). I got to wash my face here finally, and thankfully, I haven’t cried since. I had some good lunch, a good laugh at my stupid self, and a good poop lmao. I’m finally home, I took a shower, and I’m tucked in.

Now, for why I wrote about this whole thing – I’ve been doing this thing where I count my blessings or list down a few things I am grateful for every day. I have so much to be grateful for today, and I really wanted to share this list with you. So here we go. Today I am grateful for:

1. Jumaanah and Arya who stay by me no matter what
2. Afreen, who is so strong-headed and dedicated
3. My parents, who go beyond their means to take care of me
4. That old lady in the coffee shop (I don’t know her name, but so grateful)
5. The employees of the coffee shop who have dealt with an unstable customer from 10:00 in the morning
6. My privilege to be having such first-world problems
7. and finally, this day, that gave me the strength to give in to the pressure and actually gave me space and time to acknowledge what I have been feeling.
8. And also, the ability and courage to speak about the fool I made of myself today. 

It was a good day, not.